How to revoke access from unwanted apps which are Google authenticated

I recently grant access to feedspot from my Google account to check it out. But when I wanted to remove it I figured the application doesn't have an option to do that except may be sending a request to them via email. Then I figured I can directly do that from my Google account itself.

Go to https://myaccount.google.com/

Connected apps and services => Account permission

I found all the apps I have given permission is listed there with the date. Click the app and say revoke access!

Thought this could be helpful for someone else as well.

Linux Mint 17 - WIFI disabled upon wakeup

When I put my laptop to sleep and wake it up I find that WIFI is disabled in network manager. Unless I restart the laptop it doesn't get enabled. An issue similar to this has been discussed here http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=184520. I believe Mint has inherited this issue from Ubuntu since similar issues are discussed in the Ubuntu forum as well.

Based on the discussion on that thread I did the following workaround. Put the following script in /etc/pm/sleep.d and make it executable. I have name the script as "wakeupnet.sh".

#!/bin/bash

case "$1" in

    thaw|resume)

        service network-manager restart

        ;;

    *)

        ;;

esac

exit $?

eGovernance for Good Governance - Participatory

Democracy is considered as the form of government which has the most feasible governance structure and processes to reach Good Governance. While there are many factors contributing to true democracy, citizens ability to truly participate in the decision making process is highly important. Following are few issues in current various forms of representative democracy.

• Once representatives are elected citizens has very little opportunity to participate in the governance process till the next election.
• Representatives may not represent the real majority view on a particular subject matter.
• Concerns of the most vulnerable in society may not be taken into consideration in decision making.
• The quality and usefulness of information available for citizens may not be sufficient to choose the proper representation.
• The quality and usefulness of information available for representatives to understand citizens view on a particular subject matter may not be sufficient.
• Practical issues and limitations in using traditional methods to have wider consultation in all deliberations.
• Practical issues and limitations in using traditional methods to assess citizens' opinion on every subject matter.

ICT is a great tool to overcome all these issues.

UNPAN (United Nations Public Administration Network) assess a country's maturity of ICT usage for Participatory Governance using the E-Participation index. In 2012, Netherlands and Republic of Korea leads this index followed by Kazakhstan, Singapore, UK and Northern Ireland, and United States. Its is interesting to note that even though United Arab Emirates is considered a hereditary monarchy, it is within the top 20 countries with an impressive ranking of 0.7368 (same as Finland and Japan). http://www2.unpan.org/egovkb/datacenter/CountryView.aspx

However, currently the ranking seems to be only driven by the output not by the outcome.

e-People petition system (http://www.epeople.go.kr/jsp/user/on/eng/intro01.jsp) is one of the good examples from Republic of Korea. It not only takes peoples petitions but also provides information about the outcome.
http://www.epeople.go.kr/jsp/user/on/eng/intro05.jsp

"Our Singapore Conversation" is another excellent attempt to get citizens participated in the governance process by the Singapore Government. https://www.oursgconversation.sg/

Kazakhastan's government blog site (http://blogs.e.gov.kz/) enables citizens to communicate with government agencies' executives. The executives are expected response and each executives performance statistics in handling these queries and suggestions are publicly available.

e-Petition system in UK (http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/) is another good example of enabling citizen participation. If a petition is signed by 100,000 and its a matter government is responsible for it will be considered for debate in the House of Commons.

e-Petition system in US (https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/) require a petition to gather 25,000 signatures in 30 day to be considered for review. Here is the response from President Obama for petitions about reducing gun violence.

If you know of similar or more mature examples, please do share.

Most important objective of eGovernance, Good Governance

UNESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) discusses eight characteristics of Good Governance.
http://www.unescap.org/pdd/prs/ProjectActivities/Ongoing/gg/governance.asp

If these good governance characteristics are pillars holding good governance, I believe ICT (Information and Communication Technology) can provide a strong foundation to build these pillars.

ICT policy of a government should align ICT activities of its stakeholders to strengthen these characteristics and the success should be assessed by measuring the outcome.

Eclipse update failure with Java 1.7

With Java 1.7, eclipse update fails stating "Comparison method violates its general contract!".
The issue is reported on this link: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=364735

Until developers fix the issue the stated workaround seems to work.
i.e. Adding -Djava.util.Arrays.useLegacyMergeSort=true to the eclipse.ini

eclipse.ini is in the root folder of the eclipse installation. Below is how I have added the entry and it is working for me.

eclipse.ini

Notes for my talk @ FOSS for Journalists

I have to deliver a speech at FOSS for Journalists conference organized by ICTA (www.icta.lk). Since I felt this may be useful for a larger audience, I thought of having my notes on my blog.

FOSS Applications

Useful Links

1. http://www.osalt.com/
   
2. http://www.linuxalt.com/
   
3. http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Linux_software_equivalent_to_Windows_software
   
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_alternatives_to_proprietary_software
   
5. http://www.foss4gov.gov.lk/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=17
   

Getting/Intalling new Software

• Synaptic, Download and install new software
  
• GDebi, Install downloaded packages
  
• DownThemAll!, Download manager
  

Internet Browser

• Firefox
  
• Chromium
  

Playing Music & Video

• Rhythmbox
• Banshee
• Movie Player
  
• VLC

Burning CDs & DVDs

• Brasero
  

Taking Notes

• Gedit
  
• LeafPad
  

Word Processor

• LibreOffice Writer
  
• Openoffice.org Writer
  

Spread Sheet

• LibreOffice Calc
  
• Openoffice.org Calc
  

Presentation

• LibreOffice Impress
  
• Openoffice.org Impress
  

Image Viewer & Editor

• Eye of GNOME
  
• Gimp
  
• GimpShop
  
• Inkscape
  

Internet Messaging and Video Conferencing

• Pidgin
  
• Ekiga
  

Simple Publishing

• LibreOffice Draw
  
• Openoffice.org Draw
  
• Evince, PDF/PS reader
  
• LibreOffice/Openoffice.org, PDF creation
  
• Print to PDF
  

News Reader & Podcast Client

• Firefox
• Yarssr
• Rhythmbox

Blogging, Micro Blogging, and Social Media

• Any Web Browser
• http://www.blogger.com, http://wordpress.com/
• http://www.flickr.com/, http://youtube.com, http://facebook.com
• Gwibber
  

Recovering data from a corrupted pen drive

My wife complained that one of her pen drives stop working and the OS doesn't recognize it any more.

When I check the device I realized that it doesn't have a partition table any more. May be the device is failing. So I quickly create an image of the whole device using dd.

sudo dd if=/dev/sdc of=pendrive.img

I tried fsck.vfat on the image without any luck. Then I found this article. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15761/recover-data-like-a-forensics-expert-using-an-ubuntu-live-cd/

The magical tools are, testdisk, photorec, and foremost. Very importantly it all comes FREE with Linux.

I manage to recover most of her important files with these tools. Many thanks to the creators of these software!